A Personal Navigation Assistant (PNA) also known as Personal Navigation Device or Portable Navigation Device (PND) is a portable

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

product which combines a positioning capability (such as

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

) and

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...

functions. Some PNA devices are

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting poly ...

s with limited features and can be unlocked.

History

The earliest PNAs were hand-held GPS units (circa mid-1980s) which were capable of displaying the user's location on an electronic

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

. These units included simple navigation functions such as course-to-steer and course-made-good. This first generation of PNAs were used by the US military.

Market developments

Gosmore in berlin with winCE on transonic 6000

According to the analyst firm

Berg Insight Berg may refer to: People *Berg (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) *Berg Ng (born 1960), Hong Kong actor * Berg (footballer) (born 1989), Brazilian footballer Former states *Berg (state), county and duchy of the Holy ...

, there were more than 150 million

turn-by-turn navigation Turn-by-turn Navigation is a feature of some satellite navigation devices where directions for a selected route are continually presented to the user in the form of spoken or visual instructions. The system keeps the user up-to-date about the best ...

systems worldwide in mid-2009, including about 35 million factory installed and aftermarket in-dash navigation systems, over 90 million Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) and an estimated 28 million navigation-enabled mobile handsets with GPS.Berg Insight's PND report 2009
/ref> The term PNA has come into widespread use with the growing popularity of

automobile navigation system An automotive navigation system is part of the automobile controls or a third party add-on used to find direction in an automobile. It typically uses a satellite navigation device to get its position data which is then correlated to a position on ...

s. Original PNAs provided users with a map layer, real-time-traffic, and a routing engine with audio/visual cues for turn-by-turn guidance. The latest generation of PNA have sophisticated navigation functions such as parking assistance and

personalization engines Personalization (broadly known as customization) consists of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific individuals, sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. A wide variety of organizations use personalization to improv ...

that enhance the user experience. To reduce total cost of ownership and time to market, most modern PNA devices such as those made by

Garmin Ltd. Garmin Ltd. (shortened to Garmin, stylized as GARMIN, and formerly known as ProNav) is an American, Swiss-domiciled multinational technology company founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao in Lenexa, Kansas, United States, with headquarte ...

, Mio Technology Ltd. or TomTom International BV. are running an off-the-shelf

embedded operating system An embedded operating system is an operating system for embedded computer systems. Embedded operating systems are computer systems designed to increase functionality and reliability for achieving a specific task. Resource efficiency comes at the ...

such as

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

Embedded Linux Operating systems based on the Linux kernel are used in embedded systems such as consumer electronics (eg. set-top boxes, smart TVs and personal video recorders (PVRs)), in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), networking equipment (such as routers, switch ...

commodity hardware Commodity computing (also known as commodity cluster computing) involves the use of large numbers of already-available computing components for parallel computing, to get the greatest amount of useful computation at low cost. It is computing done i ...

with OEM versions of popular PDA Navigation software packages such as TomTom Navigator, I-GO 2006, Netropa IntelliNav iGuidance, or Destinator. Other manufacturers such as

Garmin Garmin Ltd. (shortened to Garmin, stylized as GARMIN, and formerly known as ProNav) is an American, Swiss-domiciled multinational technology company founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao in Lenexa, Kansas, United States, with headquart ...

and

Magellan Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese people, Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the Magellan expeditio ...

prefer to bundle their own software developed in-house. Because many of these devices use an embedded OS, many technically inclined users find it easy to modify PNAs to run third party software and use them for things other than navigation, such as a low-cost audio-video player or

replacement. GPS equipped mobile phones have now eclipsed the sale of dedicated GPS units.

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

and other handset makers were predicted to sell 162 million GPS equipped phones in 2007, dwarfing the 20 million units Garmin and TomTom have forecast they will sell combined, according to iSuppli, a leading market researcher in California. The inclusion of

Google Maps Navigation Google Maps Navigation is a mobile application developed by Google for the Android and iOS operating systems that was later integrated into the Google Maps mobile app. The application uses an Internet connection to a GPS navigation system to pro ...

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

devices such as

Motorola Droid The Motorola Droid (GSM/UMTS version: Motorola Milestone) is an Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphone designed by Motorola, which runs Google's Android operating system. The Droid had been publicized under the codenames ''Sholes'' and ''Tao' ...

and

's announcement of free

Ovi Maps Here Technologies (stylised and trading as HERE and here) is an American-Dutch multinational group dealing with mapping, location data and related automotive services to individuals and companies. It is majority-owned by a consortium (an a ...

has led to many people using their smartphones instead of having a separate PNA for trip navigation.

History

Market developments

References

See also